Agricultural research and extension programs have been built in most of the world's economies. A substantial number of economic impact studies evaluating the contributions of research and extension programs to increased farm productivity and farm incomes and to consumer welfare have been...

The chapter reviews the generation and adoption of new technologies in the agricultural sector. The first section describes models of induced innovation and experimentation, considers the political economy of public investments in agricultural research, and addresses institutions and public...

The theory and methods used to analyze the market, management, and policy elements of agricultural finance draw substantially on modern finance concepts, but with significant tailoring to the unique characteristics of agricultural sectors throughout the world. Both developed and developing...

Uncertainty and risk are quintessential features of agricultural production. After a brief overview of the main sources of agricultural risk, we provide an exposition of expected utility theory and of the notion of risk aversion. This is followed by a basic analysis of agricultural production...

This chapter presents a review and synthesis of effects of education in agriculture, summarizes major contributions, and suggests major research gaps in the literature. Although growth in knowledge enables skill acquisition and specialization of labor, which generally raises labor productivity,...

The work of more than 50 years aimed at gaining empirical insight into the production structure of agriculture and the related modes of farmers' behavior is reviewed, and orders of magnitude of the various parameters of interest are quoted. The review follows the lines of the evolution of the...

Over the last few decades, the structure of agricultural production around the world has been changing. An economic analysis of the factors influencing this evolution is presented. Special attention is given to the role of technology and resource mobility. Linkages with changes in market...

The movement of labor out of agriculture is a universal concomitant of economic modernization and growth. Traditional migration models overlook many potential interactions between migration and development. Given imperfect markets characterizing most migrant-sending areas, migration and...

The role of expectations in the empirical analysis of agricultural supply is examined under the assumption of separation of expectations and constraints in dynamic decision making. Extrapolative, adaptive, implicit, rational and quasi-rational, and futures-based models of expectation formation...